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I WALKED UP TO THE bar at a place called River’s Edge Bistro, which turned out to be an interesting name since it wasn’t what you’d consider close to a river. It was a few miles from the St. Johns and, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t even a small creek nearby. But it was a catchy name, even if it did add some confusion.
The place was quiet and the bartender asked me what I wanted as soon as I sat down, then put a Jack Daniels down in front of me. “My name’s Lydia.”
“Hi Lydia,” I said, and glanced at the handful of patrons to either side of me.
She was bubbly and smiled. “Is this your first time here?”
I reached for my drink and nodded as I took a sip. “I don’t venture out much.”
She pulled a wet glass from the dishwasher behind the bar and wiped the inside with a towel. “Are you from around here?”
I nodded. “Sort of. Grew up in Fernandina Beach. But I live in Jax now, over at the Trout River Marina.”
She nodded as if she barely heard what I’d said then walked away. She seemed to have had enough small talk. She had her back to me, counting cash in the register at the back of the bar.
I said, “Lydia, can I ask you a question?”
She closed the register door then stepped toward me. “Sure, what do you need?”
“Do you know who John Thompson is? I understand he used to come in here?”
The smile on her face disappeared as she looked down toward the floor and nodded. “Of course I know John.” She looked down toward the far end of the bar toward a few empty stools. She nodded with her chin. “That seat down there, third one from the end...that was John’s seat.”
“Oh, so he was a regular?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t call him a regular. That kind of has a negative connotation, doesn’t it? He wasn’t like that.”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
She gave a slight tilt to her head. “I just never thought of him as a regular. He had friends here, that’s all. He’d stop here for a drink after work or if he had late meetings. Sometimes he’d have one drink and go home. Sometimes he’d stay for a while.”
I looked around the bar, most of the seats empty. “Did he normally come here alone?”
“Sometimes he’d come alone. But he’d meet friends here or stop by with a client.”
“And he got along with everyone here?”
She gave me a funny look. “John? Of course.” She leaned on the counter and looked into my eyes. “I like your eyes.”
I couldn’t tell if the compliment out of left field was an attempt to throw me off my questioning or if she was just being nice. I lifted my glass to my mouth. “Thanks,” I said, then took a sip.
She poured a beer from the tap and kept her eyes on the glass in front of her. “So, you mind if I ask you a question?” She walked down the other end of the bar and placed the beer in front of a waitress who took the glass from Lydia and walked to one of the tables. Lydia came back down my way and again leaned on the bar. “What’s with the questions about John Thompson?”
I nodded, leaned forward and pulled one of my business cards from my pocket. I placed it down and slid it across the bar to Lydia.
She picked it up and looked it over, then slipped it in her shirt pocket. “So you’re a private investigator, huh?” She turned and looked behind her, toward the kitchen, then leaned on the bar with her hands spread wide from her shoulders. “You’re investigating something about Mr.Thompson?”
I looked down into my glass and swirled the two melting cubes around the inside. “You could say that.”
She straightened herself up off the bar and folded her arms in front of her. “What’s there to investigate? He fell off his bike...” She turned her eyes from me then reached for a cocktail napkin and dabbed the corner of her eye as a tear came down her cheek.
“I’m sorry...” I said.
“He...he was...” she wiped her nose with a napkin and looked around the bar. A couple of the customers from down the other end looked our way. “We all liked him. It’s just...it’s hard to believe.” Lydia turned and walked away, came back a moment later with cases of beer between her arms. She set them down on the floor and bent over to load the bottles into the cooler behind the bar. “So who are you working for?” She said without looking up at me.
“It’s not something I need to share with you right now. ” I sipped my drink and looked at her over the top of my glass.
“Oh, okay. But then...I guess you wouldn’t be investigating if you believed it was really an accident?”
Lydia was more interested than I’d expected her to be when I’d first walked in.
I said, “If by chance it wasn’t an accident, I’m the one who needs to prove it.”
She stopped loading the bottles into the cooler and looked up at me and closed the cooler door. “You think he was murdered?”
The handful of customers down the other end of the bar looked our way as soon as the words came out of Lydia’s mouth. I turned and gave them a forced smile and a nod.
I leaned on the bar, closer to Lydia. In a hushed voice I said, “All I’m trying to do is get to know a little more about John, and talk to some of those he spent most of his time with. But I’m not ready to say his death was caused by anything other than an accident.”
I looked up and through a small window behind the bar I made eye contact with a muscular man in a tight white t-shirt and a thick neck coming out the top of it. He had a shiny bald head and looked a bit like Mr. Clean, although maybe a little shorter. He stared at me as he wiped his hands on the white smock hanging from his neck. But he disappeared from the window and poked his head out the door behind the bar. “Lydia,” he said. “Come back here for a moment?”
Lydia gave me a glance then walked through the swinging door and disappeared from my view.
When Lydia walked back through the door, I said, “What’d the chef want? He was staring at me...just wondered if maybe it had something to do with me?”
She turned and looked over her shoulder toward the door. “Who, Brian?” She shrugged. “He just asked me who you were.”
I grabbed my tab from across the bar and stuck a twenty under my glass. “I wish I could stay, but... just do me a favor and keep my card. Call me if you think of anything about John you’d want to share with me.”
I got up and left through the front door. As soon as I stepped outside the hot sun beat down on top of me through the thick, humid air. I turned the corner and walked around to the back of the restaurant’s parking lot. I made it halfway to my car when I realized I didn’t have my keys. “Shit.” I turned to walk back inside but stopped.
Brian, the tough guy from the kitchen, stood in front of me. He dangled my keys then folded his arms in front of his chest. My keys disappeared between his thick, meaty arms. He said, “You forget something?”
I stepped toward him with my hand out in front of me. “Oh, I appreciate you bringing me my keys.”
But he wouldn’t give them to me. “Why are you coming into my restaurant, asking about one of my deceased customers?”
“Oh, I didn’t know that wasn’t allowed. Maybe you should put a sign up. Right next to the No Smoking sign. Say, No asking questions about deceased customers.”
He tilted his head. “What are you, some kind of a smart ass?”
I shrugged and before I even had a chance to react, he jumped at me and threw a punch into my face. I turned my chin, but not enough for him to miss. He got me right in the side of my head. My ears started to ring. He grabbed me by the shirt and threw me down toward the ground then dropped his knee into my stomach.
He stood over me as I stayed down and looked up at him. The sun shined all around his big, bald head.
He tossed my keys down on the ground and turned to walk away.
But I jumped to my feet and grabbed the back of his bald head. I spun him around and threw my forehead square into his face. A popping sound was followed by blood pouring down from his nose.
He covered his face with both hands. “You broke my nose. Holy shit...you broke my goddamn nose.”
Blood poured through his fingers as I threw another punch and caught him right in the gut. I swung my leg across his knee and he fell hard to the ground.
I picked up my keys and ran to my car. I turned the key and hit the gas and looked in the rearview mirror as my new friend stumbled as he tried to get to his feet.
––––––––
ALEX SAT OUT ON HER front porch. Her dog Raz barked and charged down the stairs at me but stopped dead in his tracks. His tail wagged and his pace turned into a trot.
“Come ‘ere, Raz,” I said. He drove his nose into my crotch as I pet him behind the ears.
Alex stood up from her chair and walked down the steps toward me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
“This guy just attacked you, for no reason?”
“I left my keys on the bar. He was nice enough to bring them out to me, but I guess he felt throwing a punch and dropping his knee into my gut should be the tradeoff.”
Alex shook her head and walked back up the porch and into the house.
I followed her inside and into the kitchen where she pulled out a stool at the pub-style table under the window.
She grabbed a dish cloth, opened the freezer and wrapped some ice inside the towel. She handed it to me and looked closer at my head. “You’ve got a lump.”
“I was asking the bartender about John Thompson and noticed this dude from the back kitchen watching me.”
“Was he her boyfriend? Maybe he doesn’t like good looking men talking to her?”
I shook my head. “She’s half my age.” I held the ice up on my head. “Maybe, but he told me not to come into his restaurant asking about his dead customers.”
Alex’s eyes opened wide. “Is that what he said?”
“Pretty much.”
Alex left the kitchen and came right back with her laptop in her hand. She put it up on the table. “I looked him up when you called.” She turned the screen toward me so I could see it. “Is this him?”
There was a photo on her screen of the same guy posing like he was in a bodybuilding contest.
“Yeah, that’s him.” I looked up at her. “Big dude, isn’t he?”
She nodded. “You know his last name?”
“No. We didn’t have a chance to chat.”
“Well, I do. It’s Mason. Brian Mason. He’s Roy Mason’s son.”
“No shit?”
Alex pulled a bottle of sparkling water from the refrigerator, poured a glass and put it down in front of me.
I looked down at the glass. “Don’t you have something stronger?”
She didn’t answer but said, “So basically, it sounds like he attacked you because you were asking questions about John Thompson?”
I took a sip of the water and nodded. “A little suspicious, isn’t it?”
She poured herself a water and took a sip. “You’d think if he had something to hide, he would’ve been a little more cool about it, right?”
I nodded, although it hurt my head when I did. I stood up from the table with the towel and ice still against my head and looked outside through the window over the sink. “The bartender seemed to be more broken up about John than his own wife was.”
Alex typed on her laptop and again turned the screen toward me as I walked back toward the table. “Take a look at this,” she said.
Roy Mason and John were on the screen together, holding a large trophy between them.
Alex said, “It’s a golf tournament from last year. The article mentions that Roy is John’s client and that they both sponsored the tournament. Apparently Roy owns a lot of property and a few businesses...from Georgia to St. Augustine.”
I nodded. “He’s in real estate, right?”
She nodded. “Mostly. But he has other businesses I found online.” She pulled the laptop back and typed on the keyboard. “Did you know John’s second wife is dead?”
“Yeah, she told me. But I wish I knew that before I went over there.”
“Did she tell you what happened?”
“No, I guess I assumed it was a car accident.”
Alex shook her head and turned the screen to me. “She died at home. She was alone, just got back from a trip. John found her dead at the bottom of the stairs.”
I looked over the article on the computer.
Alex said, “And a year later, he married Michelle.”
“He had a son,” I said.
Alex nodded. “I already looked him up, too. He lives down in Gainesville. Or at least he did, after his mother’s death. He’s about twenty-one, and his name’s Nate Ryan.”